“What is it?” he asked.
“The Face of God,” she said. “Come on. Let’s go inside.”
“Inside?”
“Come on.”
She tugged at his hand, drew him toward the Face of God. At the chin, they stopped while she tugged at a granite mole and swung a stone door outward. Behind, there were steps chiseled from the rock: broad, rugged platforms that led upwards into darkness. They climbed them, moving from the gray light that flushed through the open door into a dense blackness, then into another area of soft illumination that filtered down from above. Eventually, they came out of the gloomy stairwell into a passageway wide enough for three men to walk abreast. Ahead lay circles of brighter light in the grayness. When they got to these, he found they were the result of light passing through the giant eyes. They were directly behind the godly orbs, looking out and down on an empty temple.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked.
He nodded, truly struck with the beauty of the place. “What is the passage for?”
“The bishop would sit up here on holy days that demanded his presence.”
“Tell me about this god,” he said, running his hands along the rims of the eyes. “What was believed of him?”
She abruptly pulled away from him and turned to look stiffly out over the empty pews.
“What’s the matter?”
“Nothing.”
“Something’s the matter. Have I violated a taboo?”
“No. Of course not.”
“What, then?”
“He was the god—” Her voice broke into a miserable gasping. She silenced herself, tried to collect her wits. “I should not have brought you here.”
“Why?”
“He—”
Then he knew; much as men are visited by great revelations in biblical stories, he was touched by the understanding of what she was trying to say but could not. He grasped her and held her against his chest, held her tightly and closely. She cried on his shoulder while he stroked the mane of her hair. “He was the god—” Davis began, trying to say it for her. His own voice broke and refused to speak the rest of it.
She sank to her knees, and he knelt with her. On the floor, together, they cradled each other.
He found his voice again where it cowered in his throat. “He was the god of fertility, wasn’t he? The god of the future.”
Exterminated . . .
She nodded her head against his chest.
“Don’t cry,” he said, knowing the foolishness of the statement. Her people were dead, the last of her kind were dying. Why the hell shouldn’t she cry?
Damn the Alliance! Damn the Supremacy of Man! Damn them to hell!
His curses were like a litany on his tongue, spurting between his tears and echoing about the stone corridor within the head of God. He held her, rocked with her. He lifted her face and kissed her nose. It was tiny and warm against his lips. He kissed her cheeks, neck, hair, lips . . . And she kissed back, with enthusiasm. He felt her tongue against his, her tears mingled with his.
And the corridors of God’s mind knew love . . .
They told him Demos was a place without danger. Yet there had been the spiderbats when he had landed. The bird diving at the windscreen of the grav car on the way up from the port . . . the rat in the demolished gas shelter . . . And now the love he had for this alien woman. Yes, that was the most dangerous thing of all. And though Proteus floated only a short distance down the ancient passageway, this was the one danger the machine’s powers could not protect him from . . .
III
THE DAYS seemed to pass as swiftly as the leaves fell from the yellow trees. One fled after the other with such rapidity-that autumn was soon fast upon the fringes of winter and the air was nipped with the chill of coming snow. They were usually oblivious to the cold, for there was the warmth between them, the heat of their bodies. Occasionally, as the afternoon waned beyond the portals of the aviary and she would be required to return to the Sanctuary, he would begin thinking of the hopelessness of the situation and a chill would work its way into the base of his spine and crawl upwards along his back like a spider. It was in the fifth week of their lovemaking that time jerked to a halt in its rush past them, and he was forced to confront the nature of their future in a responsible manner.